Save our land from this ghost!
Emergency! A ghost is haunting the land we live on – the ghost of land degradation & desertification.
The relentless march of the ghost has ruined about 30 per cent of India’s total geographical area and made it unproductive, notes the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Land Degradation and Desertification Atlas of India 2021. Wandering around the world with fewer restrictions than humans, this ghost has rendered 23 per cent of the land on the planet useless notes the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on its website. While these statistics are frightening, the picture is and will always remain incomplete without any mention of droughts. Complementing desertification, droughts have proven to be deadly. They have taken around 6,50,000 lives between 1970 and 2019 according to a publication of the UN. While the ever-increasing water scarcity currently impacts two-fifth of the world’s population, the future seems even bleaker as droughts are estimated to put 700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030 according to WHO